Godparenthood and the Council of Trent : crisis and transformation of a social institution (Italy, XV-XVIIth centuries)

Abstract

In European societies of the past, baptism was thought to be able to establish
a particular kind of kinship (spiritual kinship) which involved godfathers, godmothers, godchildren and their parents. Spiritual kinship ties had a great social importance and were used to establish networks of social alliance: the more so, given that up until the Council of Trent (ended in 1563) it was customary in many areas of Italy and of Europe to have lots of godparents. The ties of spiritual kinship were mainly horizontal, and selection of godparents followed complex strategies. The Council of Trent put an end to these ancient customs, by stating that a maximum of one godfather and one godmother could attend the ceremony. This caused the standardization of ‘models’ of godparenthood which had been very varied: the new, and clearly dominant, model being the ‘couple model’ (one godfather and one godmother). The social consequences of the reform of godparenthood, which was forcefully imposed to populations that tried vainly to resist, until recently were entirely unknown. The article aims at analyzing such effects on the base of a wealth of data for Northern Italy. It demonstrates that the reduction in the number of godparents caused the verticalization of godparenthood as a social institution: the only godfather left having often social status much higher than the parents of the baptized child. Godparenthood, then, stopped being an institution linking mainly social peers, and began resembling an instrument of social patronage. This also led Catholic Church to accept the fact that it was impossible to transform it in an useful pedagogical instrument to raise children in the Christian faith.